Timeithian's Tale
by jak3combat
Summary: Nightmare Moon wasn't the hardest I've had to face. You want to hear about true war? Let me tell you of my time on Earth, an Alicorn among Humans. With what I've seen during my century there, be lucky you grew up in comfort. Rated M for death, murder, war, and alcohol.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Pony on Earth. Three words that could send a chill down the hardest Brony's spine. And yet I'm doing one of these and a Human in Equestria fanfiction. What have I done with my life? Woe is me and all that jazz and shit. On with the show!**

**Also, there will only be one chapter per era, and it will highlight a few of the events, so this will be a short story.**

Rain. First thing that my senses told me while I slowly came back to the land of consciousness. Rain, mud, and the smell of a familiar copper. And the feeling of saddlebags on either side of my flanks, probably coated in mud already.

I was on a battlefield, right after being banished from one. Faust damn you, sister.

Cracking open my eyes, I noted that it was night time and there was an occasional _crack_ coming from nearby. A scream of pain or two was heard sometimes, confirming that I was, indeed, in a war. Well, as the saying probably goes, no rest for the wicked. So help me Faust... All I really wanted to know what was making those noises.

Getting to my hooves, I slowly walked through the mud, noticing that I was in a deep ditch, probably eight hooves deep or so. The walls were occasionally held up with planks of wood, and more often than not covered in bodily fluids. It didn't take a genius to tell what's happened.

About half a minute of sloshing through the mud, I saw the first casualty. It was an odd creature, roughly resembling a diamond dog or minotaur in body, but that's where similarities pretty much ended. It didn't have fur anywhere except on the top of its head (which had a triangluar hole in the forehead), two odd ears, what looked to be a nose, and two thin lips for its mouth. Below the head was rough, muddy clothing, which told me that they didn't have fur there either. At one appendage was a strange wooden club with a metal tube fastened to one side and a few smaller bits on the other.

I picked up the club and slowly moved the parts, facinated by the way it worked. A small stick of metal with a ball on the end slid back, allowing a small, brass thing to eject from the 'barrel', and when I pushed it back I noticed a similar brass item be pushed in. So it was like a crossbow, but way more advanced. Knowing that I wouldn't die, I placed a hoof near the exit and slowly 'squeezed' what was now obviously the trigger.

A very loud _crack_ sounded as pain erupted in my hoof, a hole suddenly appearing clean through my foreleg, while something embedded itself into the wood support.

"Alright then." I muttered, doing a simple healing spell to fix my hoof, ejecting the brass and pushing another one in. Whether or not I wanted to, I might as well join the right side of this war. I quickly looked the body over for more brass, finding a five brass strip of them in a pocket. I figured that the strip kept the brass together until pushed into the crossbow by the sliding bolt, so I stored the strip into my bags and resumed my self-given quest of finding a breathing...whatever these things are.

Soon, a rapid _crack crack crack_ started up ahead, causing my ears to flick in slight irritation. A voice faintly echoed through the ditch.

"Get me that blasted belt, Chalmers!" A male shouted, causing me to move forward faster.

"It fell into the bloody mud!" 'Chalmers' shouted back. "I can't bloody well clean it off at the moment!"

"Bloody... Look for another one!"

As I neared them, I noticed that there was a belt of the brass strewn on the lap of a recent corpse, neatly folded. The being looked like it was melted, from what I could see by the face. A faint smell of garlic lingered, almost overpowering the coppery scent of blood. I grimanced and picked the belt up, assuming that's what the first voice was talking about.

"Would this work?" I called out (loud enough for them to hear it over the sound) and threw it with just enough magical strength to get it there.

"Who's that?" Chalmers replied before I started hearing a few mechanical parts moving, ending with a click and more cracking. "I know that you're not Vic, since he didn't bloody wear his gas mask."

"Whatever you do, don't panic." I said, before trudging into their sight. The _crack_ing completely stopped, as two more of the beings stared at me in shock.

"...Are the Jerries using a new type of gas or something?" Chalmers eventually spoke up, before turning back to the side of the trench. "Bugger! Keep firing!" With that he hefted up a crossbow exactly like mine and fired it off, sending a piece of brass into the mud as he reloaded. The larger tube of sorts started making the _crack_ing noise again as brass rapidly flew out of one side, landing on the lip of the ditch.

"Who are these 'Jerries'?" I asked as I stepped up to them, unable to see over the side as easily. So I reared up onto my hind legs and flared my wings out to keep myself steady. In front of us, about twenty other beings were running towards the ditch with crossbows in their grip, being mowed down by the odd, rapid fire one a few hooves away from me.

"Those blokes." Chalmers answered. "Bloody well trying to overrun our position, they are."

"Why're they doing that?" I asked, deciding to take sides with the beings next to me. I levitated the crossbow up and fired a shot, but couldn't tell if I hit anybody or not.

"We're at war with the Jerries." The first one answered. "It all started in 1914 when the Archduke of Austria was assassinated by somebody. A few alliances later and we're in the Great War, date of 1918."

"What country do you two represent?" I asked as I pushed the strip into the crossbow and put another brass thing in.

"The United Kingdom." Chalmers answered. "More commonly called British, though." He fired again and slipped a strip into his crossbow.

"What am I using, anyway?" I asked. "The closest thing I can think of would be a crossbow." The other one snorted at that.

"You're firing off a Lee-Enfield rifle." He said. "Chambered in .303 ammunition." So it was called a 'rifle'.

"What type of ammunition is this '.303' called?" I asked as I hit a Jerry in the leg, downing him.

"Bullets." He answered. "They don't fire off the casing, which I bet you knew already. Just the tips."

"And the thing you're using? I bet it's not a rifle." I questioned.

"Vickers machine gun, classified as a medium MG." He said, before holding a claw out. "Name's Nigel Macguiver. Bloke helping me is Steven Chalmers." I shook it a few times.

"Prince Timeithian." I said, causing their eyes to go wide. "I'd rather be treated as a normal being, trust me on that." I hastily added. "I did happen to go through all this mud without a complaint, after all." They still cast each other looks, but thankfully decided to drop the subject.

* * *

The three of us became a very good MG team very quickly. They were awed by my magic at first, but soon realized I was able to keep the Vickers firing even longer than what Steven could do. He didn't mind; he kept our 'arses' covered with his Lee-Enfield.

* * *

"Gasmasks on!" Chalmers suddenly yelled, pulling an odd looking helmet on. It looked like it was made of leather, had a tube at the end where his mouth would be, and two glass circles where his eyes were. I suddenly smelled garlic, before all I knew was pain.

"Dawn!" Steven shouted, using the new name I've given myself.

"Don't touch him!" Chalmers snapped as he continued firing. "Unless you want that mustard gas on your skin." I writhed in pain as the world slowly blurred together, and the last thing I heard was Steven yelling for a medic.

"Bloody hell..." I heard when I awoke. "That should've killed him." A woman spoke up from behind me.

"I'm not an expert on horses, but he's very much alive." She said. "I've never seen something shake off mustard gas and come out coherent before."

"I told you I wasn't able to die." I croaked, opening my eyes. "Could I get some water?" Chalmers handed me his canteen, and I took a long drought.

"I'm not a veteranarian, but I know that his hooves shouldn't bloody move like that..." The nurse muttered, before walking off to another patient. I got to my hooves, despite pain lancing across my back.

"What hit us? All I could smell before being in extreme pain was garlic." I questioned.

"Mustard gas." Steven grimanced. "From what we saw, that's what hit Vic before we met you." Right.

"I'm gonna need a gas mask if I'm gonna avoid something like that again..." I muttered.

"You're also gonna need a uniform, Dawn. Covering your entire body, so the gas doesn't stick to your fur and burn the ever living crap out of your skin." Chalmers added. I frowned, but nodded.

* * *

"What the hell is that?" I asked as a metal...thing came slowly trudging past, right on over the trench. It was making an awful noise as it did so, causing my ears to swivel in irritation.

"Tank." Steven said with a grin. "Designed to go over the trenches." A few more trudged after the first one. On the other side of the no mans' land, grey boxes were coming in from the Jerries' side.

"Bollocks, this is gonna get bad real fast." Chalmers muttered, sinking down a little. I simply watched as the six pounder guns (as Steven called them) fired at the Jerries' tanks.

* * *

"The war's over! We won!" An American courier yelled as he sped past on a 'motorcycle'. Steven and Chalmers slapped their hands together.

"What're you gonna do now, mate?" Chalmers asked.

"Get home to my wife." Steven replied with a sigh, before looking at both of us. "And you two?"

"Drink for a few days." The man replied, before looking at me.

"Probably go visit America." I shrugged. "Heard some good things about it, and figured why the hell not."

"You'll keep in touch?" Steven asked. I nodded and both of them wrote down addresses for me, which I pocketed. "Good luck on your journey, mate." They slowly exited the trench, and I sat in the mud for a while longer.

My horn flared a brilliant silver, and I vanished with a _pop_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Reviews:**

**IronicNounAndVerbCombo: You should see the ratings I have over on FimFic for my stories. Not pretty for everything except the main MiE.**

**Picklemonman: I will!**

America was something completely new for me. I arrived in a city that was bustling with cars and probably more humans than there were ponies in Equestria. In one city!

"Is beautiful place, no?" A Russian Jew asked from next to me on the ship. We had talked a little bit about our homelands on the trip, so I knew him, if not like I knew Chalmers and Steven. "Land of new opportunity." I had helped him with his 'English' so he wouldn't be blindsided by a foreign language, and in return he taught me Russian.

"Beautiful place indeed, Boris." I smiled and got back onto all fours, wings settling down.

"You no afraid of being disc-c-crinate?" Boris stumbled, but I nodded and grinned a little.

"Discriminated." I slowly said. He was intelligent, but still learning. "And, no. I've faced worse." My throat still hurt a little from the mustard gas canisters.

"I come with you?" He asked, looking down at me.

"Depends on where we go." I said, looking out over the harbor. "I've been thinking of a place down south, myself." Aiming towards Virginia or Florida, in all honesty.

"South sound nice." Boris said. "Not too cold, good for growing food." And grazing animals, though I knew he didn't see me as one. Respected me enough to not say it.

"South it is." I nodded as the boat finally came to a stop at a pier. "Hope they accept me as a sentient being..." I muttered under my breath as we started going down to the docks.

* * *

Well... The trip through the US could've gone better. Way better. Most Americans thought I was some kind of mutated cow. The blacks, or as most white Americans called them, Negroes, and fellow immigrants were more accepting of me as the whites were.

And that's why 1925 found me working in a 'coloured' shop in Florida for $10 a week. Boris was making the same money, so discrimination was forced upon both of us. I had written Chalmers and Steven once we settled down, like I promised.

* * *

1929... That was a fucked up year. Sure, the beginning all the way up through October was nice, but then came October 29th. The day the stock market crashed.

Over the next decade, millions lost their jobs, their homes, and could barely afford an apple a day. I was rather fortunate, compared to many of the others. I had saved up my money when possible, and didn't give any to the banks through sheer paranoia. So when the local bank closed down, I was probably the richest being in town with a whopping $5,000 to my name. Boris followed in my shoes and managed to keep around $2,000.

* * *

It was... tough, to say the least. Because I wasn't a rich prick, rather a rich and generous person, I had opened my modest home to help anybody who needed to rest under a roof. Because the fact that most whites who weren't immigrants happened to be racist pricks, I erected a sign that forbade any racist people from entering my home.

I had mostly blacks take full advantage of my generosity. Some of them happened to be veterans, and we spent time between meals swapping stories of the Great War.

It sickens me that black people in this country were slaves not even seventy years ago. And women had gained the right to vote about a decade ago. I read their Bill of Rights; if all men were created equal, then why the hell did they enslave black men?

It also saddens me that women were treated as second class people, just barely ahead of the blacks. I'm ashamed to say stallions from my world are the same, and even Celestia didn't think that I was competent to rule. When I get back, if she doesn't welcome me with a good job I'll crack some heads.

It was a really tough decade for us, but with another World War looming over the horizon, I started preparing. Hell, Roosevelt offered me a position in the military, complete with full citizenship when I took a tour of DC and met him. I accepted it and went back to my home in Florida to prepare for war once again. Boris was almost too old to join, but I was able to whip him into shape. Most of the vet's kids in town did the same, once WWII began in earnest...


End file.
